Let's Have Dinner
by the point
Summary: He has survived The Fall, accepted his best mate's fist to his sharp cheekbones, and felled a mad man's criminal web of lies and spies. But, for the life of him, Sherlock could not compose a text.


**Let's Have Dinner**

_**Let's have dinner.**_

He steepled his fingers, elbows resting on his knees, and leaned forward over the coffee table. The sofa sagged under his weight, the clock struck the passing of another minute, and the skull was collecting dust on the mantel. There was a fly on the window, a waiting experiment under John's bed ("Stay out of my room, Sherlock!"), and at any moment Mrs. Hudson would arrive to dust the skull ("Not your housekeeper, dear!").

Yet, despite all the small nuances and distractions 221B Baker Street had for him (including giving the lone smiley-face on the wall a companion), Sherlock had the whole of his attention concentrated on his phone.

_**Let's have dinner.**_

The clock struck another minute and his severe vigilance over his phone clouded with irritation. The message was short, concise and could hardly be misconstrued as anything but dinner. However, she was wont to misunderstand as she lacked confidence in this area (as did he, but he would not say so), and then all the courage he had mustered would be for naught.

Scowling, he grabbed the phone from the table and, with much more vigour and strength than was necessary, quickly pressed the "Backspace" button several times. He watched, with no little satisfaction, as the letters vanished one by one.

_**Let's have dinner.**_

_**Let's have dinne**_

_**Let's have din**_

_**Let's have**_

_**Let's**_

_**L**_

With one last nudge, the message was gone and only the flat, dull screen of his phone remained. It was hardly a victory, as it grated on him even more. If he didn't know any better, the screen seemed to be taunting him, waiting to be filled with letters and punctuations, just daring for him to try again. Just daring him to open himself again.

Growling, Sherlock dropped the phone on the table and unceremoniously fell, face-first, onto the couch. Face stuck between two cushions and his feet dangling off the armrest, he supposed that, despite the dreary outlook of his day thus far, at least John was away with Mary. The quiet will help him concentrate on this pressing task-

Two pairs of footsteps on the stairs — one heavy and sure, the other light and accompanied with heels — and Sherlock groaned. _Speak of the devil._

Despite knowing their arrival, he still tensed when the door opened to a John animatedly retelling their latest case to his fiancé. Mary laughed and nodded. John gestured with his hands. Mary added a comment or two. Both pointedly ignoring the prone figure lying face-first on the couch, and instead made their way idly to the kitchen with groceries in hand.

Sherlock twitched at the shuffle of grocery bags, the opening and closing of the cabinet doors, and the pitched cry from Mary when she discovered whatever-it-was in the refrigerator. Sherlock smirked. He liked Mary, as much as he could like another person who tolerated his behaviour, but she was bloody taking away his Blogger. He didn't need to play nice, did he?

"Sherlock!" John bellowed on cue. "What did I tell you about experiments in the refrigerator?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and unearthed his face from the couch to say, "John, whatever is the matter? We both agreed-"

"Nope-"

"-that we would both benefit-"

"I don't think so-"

"-from these observations."

"_No,_ Sherlock."

Sherlock rolled his eyes again, not bothering to hide it from his roommate this time. It was harrowing enough that John would be moving out soon (again, bloody fiancé ruining their "bromance," as Lestrade aptly named it), but now she dictated how the experiments were to be run at 221B? Sherlock made to rise from the couch, furious and vindicated, when his phone interrupted.

"_**Ahhhh…"**_

John stiffened, Mary frowned, and Sherlock sneered before, once again, falling back down onto the couch. When his phone moaned again, he ignored it as he contemplated how to go about his original plan. He had multiple methods to opening conversation, but it was hard to concentrate with John in the room. Mary, fortunately, was not so loud.

"Stop it, John," Sherlock instructed.

"I wasn't doing anything," John protested, returning to the groceries as if nothing had happened.

"You were _thinking_," Sherlock corrected. "_Stop it_."

"Stop-!" John sputtered for a moment until Mary touched his arm with a comforting, "John."

Mary was good for one thing, Sherlock decided. She was good in wrangling John. If she hadn't shown up at the restaurant when she did, John would've given Sherlock _two_ black eyes instead of just the one. Returning from the dead had a lot more disadvantages than he'd thought.

Sherlock frowned. It had been a long three years, so long, and he was grateful for his return. John was safe and happy — and engaged to a good woman. Mrs. Hudson was safe and happy — and having a great romance with the baker at the corner. Lestrade was safe and happy — and finally out of that destructive marriage that had him in a stranglehold.

And Molly…

"_**Ahhhh…"**_

Sherlock gritted his teeth. The Woman was persistent today.

"You're not going to answer that?" John queried, still a little jittery to discover that, not only was Sherlock alive, but so was one conniving dominatrix.

"Dull," Sherlock drawled, turning so that his back was to the phone.

"At least change the message tone," Mary chided. "What would Mrs. Hudson say?"

Sherlock huffed. The Woman had been calling on him more often than he'd preferred. More than once she had interrupted an interesting dissection at the morgue or a particularly engaging discovery at one of Barts' labs. He'd be furious if he hadn't found Molly's reaction to be amusing. Still squeamish and still blushing.

He smirked.

"Maybe it's important?" John prompted nervously.

Sherlock wouldn't have told John about The Woman if he knew John was going to misinterpret his relations with her (just as he was sure _she_ would). He had sought the dominatrix's help during the three years "abroad." She knew, in ways he hadn't, how James Moriarty's spidery network of spies and lies had operated. It had been a business transaction. One that, he supposed, revealed more about himself than he thought.

One night. It had only been one night. It had been sensory and satisfying, and it had quieted all the voices inside his head for one beautiful and perfect moment of self and clarity. It was everything he hadn't expected, but everything he'd deduced it to be. Spent at an opulent hotel in a city of bright lights and amour, he'd found himself dulled and content lying in soft sheets and candlelight.

An hour later, he realized that he'd much prefer a quiet flat in London smelling of lemons, Earl Grey tea and stray cat fur on his Belstaff. For The Woman hadn't been able to quiet all the voices: the static cry from John before he leapt, the dissolving whimper from Mrs. Hudson as she stood before his grave, the self-loathing anguish from Lestraud while closing his files —_ forever._

Irene Adler was interesting. A puzzle. Precocious and promiscuous. She had knowledge he hadn't. She drew him in, stunned him, and left him sated. But the body was transport. His mind needed more than her mystery and rough kindness, her smoky eyes and her stumbling uncertainty as she tried to comfort his abrupt nightmares of falling, blood and the loss of his friends.

His first time, and he wanted a different sort of hands from a woman with a different sort of knowledge. Delicate and sure, calloused and nicked with tiny scars — the kind that touched his arm tentatively, brushed his hair after a particularly hard night, held him at his most vulnerable. The kind that doctored his wounds, made his coffee the way he liked it ("Black, two sugars"), and pressed it gently to his cold, numb hands in the mornings after ending life after life after life with no end in sight.

His first time, and he needed someone to _catch him when he fell_.

He needed The One.

Leaping to his feet, and startling John and Mary, Sherlock picked up the phone and scrolled back to the flat, dull page. Resolutely, before he lost all nerve (or perhaps let himself get lost in his Mind Palace in a subconscious method of delaying the matter even further), he punched in the letters viciously and righteously. With a sure (and nervous) nod, he pressed "Send" and dumped the phone back on the table.

"Right, John," he said, a little jostled and more than a little excited. "What are you and Mary having for lunch?"

"_Lunch?_" John gaped, astonished. "You want to _eat?_"

"Yes," Sherlock sounded curtly.

Mary stared from her fiancé to the Consulting Detective. She, too, was surprised that Sherlock wanted sustenance. Seeing as John was too shocked to reply, she felt that she must be the one to break the stalemate. "What would you like to have, Sherlock?"

"Crisps!" Sherlock chimed delightfully.

Mary remembered having purchased a bag or two at the grocers and turned to retrieve them. Just as she picked up the bag, Sherlock's phone sounded and he whipped to it in an instant. If he'd been wearing his Belstaff, Mary would've been impressed by the _swooshing_ action. (John did not like her mentioning Sherlock's _swooshing_ action…as it led to a lot of swooning too.)

At first, John and Mary thought it was The Woman, but then they remembered that her tone was a guttural and base moan. This one was a chime, a friendly chime. It was more clear and gentle and soft, like a giggling wind or a warm embrace.

"YES!" Sherlock exclaimed after reading the text. In a flurry, Sherlock dropped his phone on the couch and hopped to his room. "Disregard lunch, John! My mind is on dinner!"

John frowned, confused, watching his best mate slam his bedroom door behind him. He turned to Mary with an inquisitive look and she returned it with open curiosity. Slowly, something dawned on her and she smiled, eyes bright and mischievous.

"What is it?" John asked.

"That wasn't Irene Adler," Mary said.

John raised a brow. "Yes. Strange, isn't it? And it certainly can't be Mycroft." John wrinkled his nose at that.

"No, certainly not Mycroft," Mary agreed.

They paused as Sherlock raced out of his room and grabbed his coat. Mary giggled at the _swooshing_ action as he put it on. John narrowed his eyes, but did not comment. Before either could speak, Sherlock was out of the flat.

"He forgot his phone, that git," John said. "How are we to contact him if Lestraud has a case for us?"

Mary, very calmly and very patiently, picked up Sherlock's phone from the couch. John was about to protest when she began to scroll through Sherlock's messages, but thought better of it. The bugger had "killed" himself and made him live in hell for three long years, a little snooping was only right. Feeling justified, John shuffled to his fiancé and read Sherlock's texts over her shoulder.

_**I'm in London.**_

_**Are you free tonight?**_

_**Let's have dinner.**_

"Irene," John muttered.

Mary scrolled further.

_**Let's have dinner. — SH**_

"Excuse me," Sherlock quipped, cold and steely.

John and Mary jumped. They hadn't heard his return.

"I do believe you have my phone," the detective said.

John was speechless, not knowing what to say. He could only stare at his best mate as if he'd never seen him before. Mary, on the other hand, simply smiled and returned the phone. Before Sherlock could step back, she patted his arm. He did not appreciate the action.

"Oh, Sherlock," Mary chided fondly. "Do be nice."

Sherlock sniffed, offended.

"She _is_, after all, a good friend of mine," Mary said, and then met him eye-for-eye. "A _very_ good friend."

Sherlock tensed. He knew there was a reason he tolerated Mary (besides her being John's fiancé). With a huff, he turned in a whirl of Belstaff and dark curls, and left 221B Baker Street without looking back. He ignored it, but he knew that his face was unbelievably warm and his heart unbelievably light.

He glanced at the phone and couldn't stave off the grin.

Sod their knowledge. He knew they'd be more of a hindrance more than a help, but Molly Hooper was already a nervous wreck. Might as well enjoy the awkward stumbling and adorable stuttering while it lasted. And the blushing. He couldn't forget the blushing.

He texted a reply just as he climbed into a taxi.

_**Sure, Sherlock. Another case? — MH**_

_**No, Molly. A date. — SH**_

xxx

**the point**

**twitter at zhenxueqing**


End file.
